But I’m suspecting I only see this towards the end of the photoperiod. Some might say that’s too much, and they might be right - but as I say I regularly see my embers frolicking about in the brightest part of the tank. I’ve got about double that, around 80 lumens per litre, and my tank is shallower. This puts you on the cusp of high lighting.īut. Your light is 1,100 lumens, giving about 40 lumens per litre. I acknowledge that lumens are not the ideal measure, but as is often the case it’s all we’ve got. I’ve just looked up the spec of your light. I doubt hornwort would survive a postal journey, but I bought my frogbit from eBay and I’m very pleased with it. So I do think small fish can be acclimatised to less cover, although it helps to start with lots of cover first. I have been gradually reducing it because in a small tank its roots interfere with the “picture” of the tank, and the embers often strut about in the bright area in between the rafts of frogbit. I also have Amazon frogbit, which I confine to each end of the (rectangular) tank using threads of polyester tied to suction cups. You see pictures of some tanks with virtually no hiding places, and the small fish are out in the open because they have no choice. I just think it might be normal behaviour, and the fish simply make use of the fact that the tank has plenty of hiding places and choose to take an occasional “fag break”. But then, five minutes later many of them will be out and about. There are periods when none of my embers are visible - they are all hiding deep in the undergrowth. Coincidentally I also have embers and Pygmy cories. I also keep a similar size tank, albeit rectangular. I also think small tanks look better with just one shoaling species. But without the cardinals there is definitely room for 3 or 4 more embers to go with the 7 he’s got without pushing the limit. That said, you do have to consider the fact that a cube-shaped tank has the minimum footprint, so I’d probably not go right up to 27cm of fish. They won’t be especially happy in just a threesome, and being slightly bigger than embers they are probably taking the capacity of roughly four embers. So in my opinion, with good tank husbandry he could perhaps add 2 or 3 more embers, and this might make the difference to their confidence.Īctually, I would find an alternative home for the cardinals (despite me being a big fan of them). I reckon he’s got about 20cm of fish at the moment, more or less, and that’s in a 27 litre tank (nominally). This is always going to be a blurry area with different rules of thumb, some more conservative than others, but one such rule that works for small fish is “one centimetre of fish (excluding tail) per litre”. I’m not so sure it’s as clear-cut as that.
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